Apple was awarded two design patents on Tuesday for the fourth-generation iPod and Newsstand app icon. Released in July 2004, the fourth-generation iPod features the Click Wheel, and introduced the photo and iPod color models. Apple Senior Vice President of Industrial Design Jony Ive is credited as an inventor of the design.

The Newsstand app icon, which launched in June 2011 with iOS 5, features a skeuomorphic bookshelf design. Elizabeth Caroline Cranfill is the only credited designer of the icon. [via Apple Insider]

I’m sure receiving the patent in 2013 for a device that hasn’t been manufactured since 2005 and who’s only direct descendant doesn’t even get mentioned in any Apple PR is going to be of great use to them :D

And good luck defending the patent for the newsstand app’s icon for what, in essence, is a glorified RSS reader, and looks like a traditional newsstand. When companies receive patents like this, I have to wonder if maybe some daily drug and alcohol testing isn’t in order at the patent office: “Yeah, we have an app that aggregates all of a person’s digital periodical subscriptions into one place, a digital newsstand if you, and we’d like a patent on the app’s icon, it’s, wait for it… a NEWSSTAND!!!” “Oh, sure, that’s definitely original, approved”

I’m just going to assume the patent clerk had no idea what skeuomorphic meant and decided they must be missing something in the application beyond the “innovation” of icon badges that looked like magazines and newspapers.